Richard Willson has made a name for himself in California and throughout the country as someone who knows about how parking interacts with transit and transit-oriented development (TOD). His work, along with that of Robert Cervero, has moved the needle forward and been cited in numerous county and city documents attempting to reverse the trend of over parking in urban centers and along transit corridors.

The Sound Transit resolution establishing a system access policy for infrastructure and improvements to facilitate customer access to transit services has been added to the Resource Center best practices.

Norman Garrick discusses what happens when you start to change your infrastructure from being pedestrian supported to auto supported. Case in point, the City of Hartford, which had at one point 15,000 parking spaces when it was a more walkable place. Today, it has 45,000 parking spaces and less jobs that it did then. To see what that means in terms of city destruction, you only have to wait till the end of the discussion to see the destruction that has on a city's soul. In plain terms, making way for automobility decreases the efficiency of cities.

(Note: This is another in our series of expert blogs on TOD highlighting work and research that experts and advocates are doing in the field. Alyssa Sherman researched residential parking policy as a student in San Jose State University’s Master of Urban Planning Program, and completed her Master’s Thesis on this topic in May of 2010.)

New York City policymakers expect more than 9 million people will live in the city by 2030. Will zoning codes that require minimum off-street parking for new residential construction defeat the city's goal of improving traffic congestion and increasing affordable housing?

The report finds per unit requirements are lower for the many lots near transit that, as of 2007, were underdeveloped and thus future projects will require relatively few new parking spaces. But the picture becomes less clear when…

This paper by Andrea Broaddus of the University of California, Berkeley, Department of City and Regional Planning compares two “eco-suburbs” of Freiburg, Germany. Riselfeld and Vauban were created over the last 10 years. Both are transit-oriented developments designed as family-friendly live-work-play places, composed of mixed-use commercial and residential buildings meeting ecological best practice. Both suburbs have a similarly high density and are located are about 3 km from the city center with excellent transit and bicycling connections.

The only difference is the provision of automobile parking. Rieselfeld followed the German convention of one parking spot…

[This is another in our series of expert blogs on TOD, highlighting work and research that experts are doing in the field. Today's post is by Robert Cervero, from the University of California Transportation Center and UC Berkeley.]
Many apartment projects near urban rail stations, critics charge, are “over-parked” – more parking is provided than needed. This can drive up the cost of housing, consume valuable land near transit, and impose environmental costs such as water pollution from enlarged impervious surfaces.

Part of the blame for oversupply of parking in TODs (transit-oriented developments) could be the reliance on parking generation figures from the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE). ITE standards assume that car ownership levels and parking demands are no different in traditional suburban settings than in neighborhoods that are served by rail transit. Yet some studies suggest that those drawn to living near urban rail stops do so for…

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The Half-Mile Circles blog is a place to share information about recent research, innovations and other issues related to TOD and livable communities. We also invite experts to talk about their work. Combined with Jeff Wood's The Other Side of the Tracks, the Half-Mile Circles blog is an opportunity for a daily dose of TOD, and allows you to weigh in with your own opinions. Usual blog rules apply; please keep the comment threads civil. To submit an expert article, contact Jeff Wood